Hello. How appropriate that after a week of goals, the weekend should end with the fixture that invented the 4-3 scoreline. Yet sadly, there appears little prospect of Liverpool and Newcastle rolling back the years this afternoon and slugging out a seven-goal thriller as they did so memorably in 1996 and 1997. The 'This is Anfield' sign in the tunnel is supposed to make the visitors shudder, but now the sight of it is making Liverpool queasy too. They have won just once here in the league this season and a mere three times overall in the league in 2012; on Wednesday, Swansea City pitched up in the League Cup and made off with a 3-1 win against the holders. Brendan Rodgers speaks a lot about the "journey" his players are on. So far, it looks decidedly rocky. Liverpool are 13th in the table, although a win this afternoon would actually leave them four points off the top four. See, there's some of the "helicopter vision" Rodgers has been wittering on about this week.

Liverpool's problems largely lie in the goalscoring department, even though they should have had three at Everton last week. While they put five past Norwich at Carrow Road, at Anfield they have only managed to score more than one goal in a match once, against Manchester City in August. There's been plenty of pretty passing, as is the Brendan Way, but it has rarely been backed up by decisive finishing, Luis Suarez too often guilty of a wayward touch in front of goal. But then, he is expected to do it alone; Fabio Borini's injured, Andy Carroll's living it up in London and Clint Dempsey plays for Tottenham. They probably could have done with Brendan's Chopper Vision in August.

Luckily Newcastle have a worse record at Anfield than Liverpool do. They haven't won at Liverpool since a 2-0 win in 1994 – goals from Andy Cole and Rob Lee since you ask – and have only picked up a couple of draws here and there since then. What's more, they're yet to win an away game this season and have not been as impressive as they were last season, perhaps a consequence of an unproductive transfer market and the demands of Thursday nights on Channel Five. Even so, Rodgers surely won't be able to steal a few jealous glances at some of the talent in Alan Pardew's line-up: Demba Ba, Hatem Ben Arfa, Yohan Cabaye, Papiss Cisse and Cheik Tiote were all secured for a snip. Now that's Moneyball.

With all this talk of helicopters, it's a surprise Rodgers didn't sign Michael Owen, who is a trained helicopter pilot. Or Les Ferdinand. Or land on the pitch in one in Kevin Keegan style.

It has been noted that Brendan "Brentan" Rodgers bears a striking resemblance to David Brent in Being: Liverpool. So here is today's challenge: change scenes from The Office to incorporate Liverpool. For example.

An email. "Let The David Brent-Off begin!" says Adam Hirst. "A fascinating battle between two decent managers who believe their own publicity more than any other in British football... save only Sam Allardyce."

"I appreciate that this game hasn't kicked off yet, but I'm still mildly disappointed that there haven't been any goals so far," says Ethan Dean-Richards. "Remember in the old days, under Keegan, when games would start with both teams having already scored at least twice? It was a simpler time, but also a better one."

Here come The Teams. Please be upstanding for The Teams. Do Liverpool fans have horrible flashbacks to the Paul Konchesky Era when they see Jose Enrique's newly-shaved head?

Off we go. Newcastle, kicking from left to right, attacking The Kop in the first half, get us going. They keep the ball for roughly 20 seconds, handing it to Liverpool with an agricultural hoof forward. The Anfield Hoodoo is overwhelming them already.

2 min: Gerrard, making his 600th appearance for Liverpool, looks to mark it with a stunner from 35 yards out. No dice. The ball spins over to the left for Sterling, who's unceremoniously left on the floor by Anita. A free-kick for Liverpool in a promising position then.

3 min: Gerrard fizzes the ball into the six-yard box, forcing Krul to punch it away. But this is an excellent start from Liverpool, and especially Sterling. He links up well with Sahin on the left, breaking in behind Anita again and compelling Coloccini to turn the ball behind for a corner that comes to nothing. Here's Joseph Temple's offering. "Love Liverpool and Suarez, but the scene with Brent's new PA came to mind:

Brentan and Suarez are messing about with a ball in the offices of Melwood when he's signing his new contract. Brentan lunges in, and Luis goes down.

Brentan: That's a man's game, that is.

5 min: Newcastle are being pinned back here. Suarez skedaddles into the area and goes down under a strong challenge. The home fans cry for a penalty but Anthony Taylor waves play on.

6 min: Liverpool are having joy down both flanks. Suso slips a lovely pass in behind Suso, but the ball bobbles up as Wisdom crosses and flies over for a goal-kick. Now then, a replay of the Suarez incident reveals that he was caught by Coloccini. It wasn't blatant but it could easily have been given. "Would it be fair to say that Joe Allen is very much the Gareth Keenan and Steven Gerrard the Chris Finch?" asks Tom Trevelyan.

8 min: Suso cuts in from the right and sees a low skidder deflected wide for a corner on the left. Newcastle have barely been out of their half yet. Krul claws Gerrard's corner behind with some difficulty but Sahin's delivery is easily dealt with by Ba. Here's David Flynn:

Brentan: If you asked me would I like my teams to be functional and solid or entertaining and ropey, I would say, why can't they be both?

10 min: There are Newcastle players in the Liverpool half. But Liverpool have the ball.

11 min: Sterling finds space in front of the Newcastle defence but his subsequent effort from long range is well wide. It's all Liverpool though. They've been very bright. Newcastle are playing as if they have some terrible record on their minds.

12 min: Newcastle have just gone and strung four or five passes together. Hurrah! It ends with Perch sweeping a pass out for a goal-kick. Small steps. "Is it too late for an Act of Parliament to be passed forbidding the sale of British football clubs to Americans along the lines that requires artistic 'national treasures' to remain British," says Lou Roper? "The sight of the names 'Downing' and Henderson' among the substitutes (on the other might be another Act encouraging foreign buyers for certain British footballers if they remove them from Britain) provides a(nother) reminder that alleged knowledge of sport by American 'sport tycoons', such as the Fenway Group, translates, at best, to nowt in the football (as played with, you know, feet) scene."

14 min: Has anyone been calling this the Andy Carroll Derby?

15 min: Newcastle are coming into this now. Santon scampers down the left and finds Ba to his right. He takes a touch and then larrumps one miles over the bar. Anfield is very quiet.

16 min: A lull. Plenty of midfield sparring, without much of a punch in the final third so far.

17 min: Now Newcastle threaten. Ben Arfa slices Liverpool open on the left with a pass inside Wisdom for Santon to chase. He gets to the byline and cuts back on to his right foot, before curling in a cross that's just too high for Cisse to do anything notable with. The ball comes back to Anita on the right, but his centre is a waste of time. Liverpool will surely be concerned with how easily they were taken apart there though.

19 min: After some midfield harum-scarum, the ball breaks kindly for Liverpool to counter. Just as Suarez prepares to shoot from 25 yards out, just to the right, Perch halts him illegally.

20 min: Suarez, who scored a free-kick against Manchester City from a similar position this season, takes this one and bends it round the wall and just past the angle of post and bar. Tim Krul didn't move. The ball brushed the netting on its way into the crowd. Close. Maybe that will help Liverpool regain some of the fluency they showed in the first 10 minutes. Up the other end, Ben Arfa makes space for the shot but drags it wide from 25 yards out.

21 min: Suso sends Suarez away down the right, one-on-one with Taylor. Suarez runs at the backtracking defender and then shifts the ball to the right before drilling a low shot that Krul blocks with his feet. "If you were to ask me to name three great players, I probably wouldn't say Maradona, Pele," says Stuart Jenkinson."I'd go Shelvey, Jones, Enrique....Downing."

23 min: Suarez causes more havoc in the Newcastle area with a zigzagging run. He eventually loses the ball trying to do much before Allen arrives on the scene trying to make something of it, only to send the ball behind for a goal-kick. It's encouraging for Liverpool though, even if there is a discernible lack of conviction in the final third. James Stenson emails:

Brentan: Team playing-I call it team individuality, it's a new, it's like a management style. Again guilty, unorthodox, sue me.

25 min: Newcastle have a problem with James Perch who is off receiving treatment. If he does have to be replaced, Danny Simpson will probably come on and move to right-back, with Anita going into midfield.

Brentan: I don't live by "The Rules" you know, and if there's one person who has influenced me in that way of thinking, someone who is a maverick, someone who does 'that' to the system then it's Tony Adams.

29 min: Gerrard drifts a high ball to the far post, where Suarez gets above Taylor to send a harmless header wide. This isn't going to end 4-3, is it.

31 min: It's so flat inside Anfield. The home fans really need something to lift them. They've seen this match before. They saw it on Wednesday night, I fancy. "Aside from the arrogant blundering that left us with just one striker (if we can call Suarez a striker) at an age where he can be licensed to drive a car on his own, how have Liverpool managed to find themselves unable to call on a proper goalkeeper or a proper ball-winner in midfield?" wonders Lou Roper.

33 min: Martin Skrtel appears to have displaced a contact lens. It's that exciting. It does mean he won't get the benefit of helicopter vision.

35 min: Suarez takes on three Newcastle defenders and pulls the ball into the area. Number of Liverpool players who had bothered joining him in the attack: 0. This match is frustrating.

37 min: "Ricky Gervais has said many times that his favourite scene in The Office is the "I think there's been a rape up there!" one," says Nick Hartman. "What's yours? Mine would probably have to be the Black Man's C0ck Joke, which is rather coincidental considering that uh, well, um..." Probably when Brent gets his guitar out.

38 min: There's a growing suspicion that Papiss Cisse is a bit rubbish when he's not shooting.

39 min: Steven Gerrard can do what he wants because it's his 600th appearance. Which means he can definitely channel the memory of Xabi Alonso and try to score with a free-kick from inside his own half. Oh Steven! Such ambition! Such helicopter vision! On the touchline Steve Harper, the victim of one such Alonso jape in 2006, has a wee chuckle.

41 min: Suso again diddles in from the right, moving ominously on to his left foot, and sees his shot from 12 yards out deflected wide. The resulting corner comes out as far as Suso on the edge of the area. His volley is wild. Thomas Flynn again:

Brentan: I've sort of fused Barcelona with Wigan Athletic shit.

WHAT A GOAL! Liverpool 0-1 Newcastle (Cabaye, 43 min): Newcastle take the lead with their first real shot. But what a shot it is. Liverpool have dominated this half, but now they're behind. The same old story. For the first time in the half, Ben Arfa was able to run dangerously at Enrique. He twisted this way and that, before slithering to the byline. His chipped cross evaded Ba and Cisse in the middle but no one had bothered to notice Cabaye at the far post. He took a touch and then battered a vicious volley past Jones and into the top corner.

45 min: The mood around Anfield darkens as Gerrard plays a slack pass straight to Cabaye in his own half. He could play Ba in but buoyed by his stunner, he goes for goal again from long range. It's not too far off. In the crowd, the locals are using language of the industrial variety.

45 min+1: Suarez takes down a high ball, turns and sends a dismal volley shamefully wide from 25 yards out.

45 min+3: Liverpool are all over the shop now. Failure to clear a harmless free-kick on the edge of their own area ends with a Newcastle player - I'm not sure who - curling a snapshot wide. There's anger in the stands.

Half time: Liverpool 0-1 Newcastle. Newcastle have the lead at the break at Anfield for the first time since May 2004. They didn't win then but unless there's a marked improvement from Liverpool in the second half, they will this time. As the players walk off, Suarez has a natter at the officials, as is his way. He'd be better off asking Brendan Rodgers to provide him with a partner up front.

Half time emails.

"If Sam Allardyce is reading this mbm, I wonder whether he is fuming that a Brent-off is taking place without him or does he secretly see himself as Finchy?" says Dave Evans.

"I really had hopes that we'd formed some sort of team unity and identity but on that first half we seem as disjointed and utterly on different wavelengths as I've seen us," says Paul Quigley. "Beginning to have doubts that brendon can do this. The lack of sacrifice for one another and making easy options to pass to is completely devoid. What do you think?" I think they need a striker.

"When important people come to my house, see the self-portrait I've got hanging, they think 'here's someone to be taken seriously.'," says Stephen Mitchell. "But when everyday commoner types come over, they see it and know that I'm actually just having a laugh at myself, never taking myself too seriously. But it works both ways, and that's what's so brilliant about it!"

"Can't help but feel Liverpool might benefit from giving Suarez perhaps a tiny bit of support," says Richard South. "Maybe having someone within 40 yards of him when he's in Newcastle's penalty area with the ball at his feet might help us look at little more threatening. Just a thought."

Here's Lou Roper: Brentan: For me, it's all about living the dream: the team individualitiness generated by my system of ball-playing where we don't actually need to bother to get the ball or to do anything with it if you happen to have it.

Here's Peter Oh: Brentan: When people say to me: would you rather be thought of as a funny man or a great boss? My answer's always the same, to me, Downing has got the qualities to play at left back.

Here's James Stenson: Brentan: You know which "philosopher" said that? Ian Ayre..... And people say he's just a big pair of tits.

Here's Niall McVeigh: At half time, to Pardew, Brentan: "Name anything you want, and Agger will throw it over the Kop. And if he does it, we've won, and that's it, that's the real game..."

Here's Shazad Mohammed: Brentan: John Henry wants to cut the budget and trim the wage bill on Transfer Deadline Day, what would happen if the Glazers said to Ferguson 'oh you can't go out and sign a player on transfer deadline day you haven't done the dishes, you need to trim the wage bill'. He'd say [Gives the bird] "Do it yourself i've got to sign some strikers !!!"

You could not make this up. A malevolent and malfunctioning sprinkler has just turned its ire on a section of Liverpool fans. A drenched man stands there, arms outstretched, an irate look all over his fizzog. A new indignity.

46 min: Here we go again. Liverpool are going to have to do something thoroughly out of character and score a goal. "Gerrard is playing worse than Andre Santos," says Sasu Laaksonen. "Fact." Let's not go that far.

48 min: Ba has headed every corner from the right away.

49 min: This is better from Liverpool. On the left, Suarez and Sterling work a short corner routine but Suarez is blocked off before he can shoot. Gerrard then tries to make inroads on the left, only to overrun the ball.

50 min: Demba Ba, who was an injury doubt before the game, is replaced by Sammy Ameobi. Before he goes off, he gives his gloves to Ben Arfa. Is there a shortage of gloves at Newcastle or something?

52 min: Cisse is crunched by Sterling. The referee shows leniency though and lets him off without a booking.

54 min: Get Downing on.

55 min: There's no real sign that Liverpool have a clue how to get the equaliser. It will probably take a moment of magic from Suarez because Newcastle are defending very well. Here's James Stenson's latest.

Brentan: When Charlie Adam came he could barely speak English and I took him under my wing. It was a proud moment when he asked me to be his firstborn sons godfather. We had to let him go in the end. He was useless... Useless

56 min: With more than half an hour left, Krul is wasting time over a free-kick.

58 min: Jose Enrique gets away with two clear fouls on two Newcastle players on the left, which allows Suarez to wriggle clear on the edge of the area and shoot, drawing a good save from Krul, pushing the ball wide for Liverpool's ninth corner. And for the ninth time, Newcastle deal with it with the minimum fuss.

59 min: Suarez slips a pass into Sahin's feet in the area. He turns swiftly but his low bobbler bounces a couple of yards wide. Liverpool are gradually growing in confidence. Newcastle's defence is getting deeper.

61 min: A rare attack from Newcastle. Sammy Ameobi isolates Skrtel on the left and looks like he has the beating of him as he lopes into the area, only for the defender to produce an inch-perfect tackle. And it had to be, because otherwise it surely would have been a penalty.

65 min: Sammy Ameobi runs the ball out of play, beating himself with his own quick feet. He walks away, expecting a Liverpool goal-kick. And gets a corner. Eh? From the corner, Skrtel heads it behind. So the referee gives Liverpool a goal-kick.

66 min: Suso is replaced by Jonjo Shelvey.

WHAT A GOAL! Liverpool 1-1 Newcastle (Suarez, 67 min): Luis Suarez does come up with his moment of magic to drag Liverpool level. This is a sublime goal, although Newcastle will be furious with the way they've let Liverpool back into it because it all came from a loose pass from Gutierrez in midfield. Jose Enrique then hit a long ball over the top for Suarez, who had snuck in between the two Newcastle defenders. He took the ball down brilliantly on his chest, rolled it around Krul and then tapped it into the empty net. What skill!

70 min: What a miss from Jonjo Shelvey! Suarez, now winning his personal duel with Coloccini, beats the Argentinian in a tussle on the right. He could shoot but instead tees up Shelvey, who was six yards out with the goal gaping - and the midfielder inexplicably toepokes a risible effort straight at Krul. Liverpool can't believe they're not ahead. But this is what Anfield does to Newcastle.

72 min: Ben Arfa curls a tame free-kick wide of the right post from 25 yards out. Really, if Newcastle do lose this game, they can't complain. They haven't offered a lot.

73 min: Sterling's drive from 25 yards out is deflected over by Coloccini, who threw himself desperately in front of the ball. Liverpool sense a winner is on the way.

74 min: Here comes trouble: Stewart Downing replaces Nuri Sahin.

76 min: Take your time, Raheem. Liverpool break en masse, Suarez leading the charge and with options left and right. For once, he decides to pass and plays in Sterling on the right. He has a clear sight of goaland should score but takes an age to shoot, allowing Taylor to get across and deflect his effort over.

77 min: Disastrous defending from Wisdom offers up a chance to Cisse. He could have let an aimless cross drift behind but presumably didn't get a shout and instead headed the ball straight to Cisse, who swivelled and volleyed weakly wide from 15 yards out.

78 min: "I take it Gerrard will complain about the long ball tactics used by Liverpool for the equaliser?" says James Stenson.

79 min: With Liverpool looking for the winner, they're caught short at the back. Ameobi curves a delicious pass from left to right for Ben Arfa, who greedily and wastefully cuts inside before shooting straight at Jones when Cisse was waiting in the centre.

82 min: Enrique dinks a cross into the middle where Suarez, all alone, can't rise high enough to head it home. The Enrique-Suarez combination is probably up there with Yorke and Cole.

83 min: The tricky, gangly Ameobi nutmegs one man and then has a dig from 25 yards out, bringing a decent save out of Jones.

84 min:FABRICIO COLOCCINI IS SENT OFF! NEWCASTLE ARE DOWN TO 10 MEN! At first I had no idea what this was for, but the replay shows it was a moment of madness from Coloccini. Suarez flicked a pass down the right flank but as he did so, Coloccini steamed in with his boot ludicrously high, catching Suarez on the back of the leg. Dearie me. A straight red and there can be no complaints. Maybe he's not the new Bobby Moore.

87 min: Simpson has gone to centre-back, with Anita moving back to right-back.

88 min: A Gerrard free-kick from the right comes all the way to Shelvey at the far post - in a similar position to where Cabaye scored for Newcastle but his sidefooter is straight at Krul.

90 min: What a chance for Shelvey. Downing reaches the byline and serves up a wonderful cross from the left, but Shelvey sends a downward header straight at Krul from six yards out. Either side of the goalkeeper and the points were Liverpool's. That's his second bad miss. I blame Sir Alex Ferguson.

90 min+1: There will be four minutes of added time.

90 min+4: Liverpool hit the bar! A Suarez free-kick - intended as a cross - is deflected by Cisse, the one man, in the wall. It loops up all the way to Shelvey six yards from goal. He can't make any contact with it but his presence and a horrible bounce deceives Krul ... and hits the bar! It's just not Liverpool's ground.

Full time: Liverpool 1-1 Newcastle. And that's it. More frustration at Anfield for Liverpool, who have now won just two of their 10 league games this season. They might have dominated most of this match but even still couldn't overcome a Newcastle side with a terrible record at Anfield. Luis Suarez needs a friend or two up front. He can only do so much alone. Although what he can do is rather special. Thanks for reading. Bye.